1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a method and system for generating a network bandwidth adaptive content and transmitting the generated network bandwidth adaptive content to a reception terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
A dynamic adaptive streaming over hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) (DASH) technology refers to a streaming method based on an HTTP protocol and a web server that may perform adaptive streaming based on a state of a transmission channel by preparing a plurality of content file sets encoded at various bitrates with respect to the same content, and by transmitting a content file of a corresponding bitrate based on a measured network bandwidth when providing a streaming service.
In the case of applying the DASH technology, a plurality of content files having different bitrates within an appropriate bitrate range corresponding to a network bandwidth may need to be prepared with respect to content that is not prepared as a file and is generated in real time.
Also, when content files are prepared, for example, encoded at various bitrates and the range of bitrates of the content files does not match a transmission bandwidth range of an actual transmission channel, it may be difficult to perform bandwidth adaptive content transmission.
For example, it may be assumed that content file sets of five bitrates, for example, file 1: 500 kbps, file 2: 800 kbps, file 3: 1.5 Mbps, file 4: 2 Mbps, and file 5: 5 Mbps, are prepared with respect to the same content. In this instance, in the case of performing actual streaming, when a bandwidth of a transmission channel varies within the range of 100 kbps through 300 kbps as a result of measuring the bandwidth of the transmission channel, it may be difficult to perform network bandwidth adaptive content transmission. A delay may occur every time a bandwidth is insufficient to transmit a file of 500 kbps. When the bandwidth of the transmission channel varies in a band greater than 5 Mbps, it may be difficult to perform the network bandwidth adaptive content transmission due to the same reason.
Also, when the variation range of the bandwidth is narrow, it may not be possible to perform the network bandwidth adaptive content transmission. For example, when the bandwidth varies within the range of 900 kbps through 1.2 Mbps, a file encoded at 800 kbps may not be serviced using a file encoded at the above bitrate. In this case, it may also be difficult to perform the network bandwidth adaptive content transmission.
To outperform the above issues, a method of preparing content files having appropriate bitrates with respect to the entire bandwidth variation is employed. However, the method may not realistically solve the issues due to a limited capacity of a web server or a file server.